Now West End Garage, this building started life as the Swan Brewery. Small breweries operated all over town, including from people’s homes, but the Swan Brewery had several tied pubs in the area. Swan Brewery was taken over by Aylesbury Brewery Company in 1896, who used a traction engine to deliver the barrels of beer.


You can still see signs of brewery mechanics at the roof level, with wooden venting for strong brewery smells, and the doorway-shaped hole for the crane that hauled the sacks up.


In 1904, this building became Buckingham’s ‘Electric Light Works’ when the town installed electric street lighting.


With thanks to the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies for this archive image of a traction engine outside The Brewery in the early 1900s.